Once upon a time the mainstream media (MSM) was the only source of news for human beings that wanted to know what was going on across the world and in their own countries. We were at the mercy of political agendas, filtered news, refusals to cover topics and theories that individual news outlets or so-called "reporters" felt was beneath the mantle of "journalism."
Then came the Internet aka the World Wide Web, appropriately named because a whole new world opened up.
Bloggers, independent writers, social media, forums, comment sections, video upload sites, all sprouted up, and then the one thing the MSM feared the most, Alternative Media.
The MSM has waged an all-out war against Alternative Media, claiming it is inaccurate, it is opinion, it isn't "real" journalism, etc....
There are too many examples to list, those are just the most recent high profile mistakes and agenda reporting from the MSM.
Polling, from a variety of organizations, have shown a pattern of people no longer trusting the MSM, calling them inaccurate, saying they have political agendas and are refusing to report anything that doesn't fit with their agenda..... in other words, the MSM is no longer feeding the need of the masses.
Alternative Media- The Wave Of The Future
The main difference between that I have noticed since starting to contribute to an Alternative Media site, Before it's News (BIN), is that it is truly unfiltered. Alternative Media sites like BIN are not beholden to any political party or lobby group, and has no specific agenda other than providing information, and most importantly, it feeds everyone's needs.
Take a look at the categories over at BIN- Straight News, Politics, Health, Alternative News, Sci-Tech, Lifestyle, Global, Money, Space, Spirituality and Self-Sufficiency.
It is also noteworthy to mention that news the MSM completely ignored for decades, was not ignored at Alternative Media sites, news that so-called "real" journalists considered conspiracy theories.... until they were forced by Alternative Media sites, to start reporting and asking the same questions that had been asked consistently and relentlessly bu AM sites.
For example, the Bilderberg group. AM sites asking if groups of elites, bankers, politicians, royalty, corporate bigwigs, basically control the world were called paranoid...... until they weren't.
Whether readers or viewers buy into the theories or not isn't what is important, the fact that people wanted to know more, hunted for information, and the MSM refused to ask the questions, refused to address the topic, until Alternative Media forced them to, is the point.
I asked the owner/publisher of Before It's News, Chris Kitze, what made him decide on an alternative media site and what he thinks the future of Alternative Media looks like vs the future of the MSM and why.
Chris Kitze- "When we first started Before It's News, we actually used to push some of the more outrageous stories off the front page and not give them any attention, we were concerned people would label BIN a "weird" site.
Then we realized that was what people wanted, a different point of view. So we just opened it up and never looked back. Today, I don't know of any other web site where a totally unknown writer can get their stories on the front page of a site that gets 5 million unique visits a month."
He continued on to say "In the future, Alternative News will be the Mainstream News. What you
currently see as a mix of state-run and corporate media at the big outlets isn't designed to get people the truth, in fact, it serves the opposite purpose. Each time something more outrageous happens, more people wake up to the truth and start looking around for real information. While this growth seems boundless, because we're at less than 10% of the public who has now figured these things out, once we go past 10%, I believe you'll see quite a bit of censorship of email and web sites.
If you never see something, how will you know it exists?
Once this starts to happen, you'll see the growth of private networks that are heavily encrypted. That's where the true alternative media will end up and thrive."
I asked the Chief Editor, who goes by the handle, Live Free or Die, what he looks for in their featured writers and if there is any criteria to what he prefers to see in articles.
He answered with "For featured writers, we look for contributors who are submitting fully original stories, stories that were written by them, not someone else. We are also looking for writers who are submitting stories that are timely and of interest to our readers.
When selecting stories to put on our front page as featured stories, we also look for the same criteria: original stories that are timely and of interest to our readers. I specifically look for stories that also have videos embedded to help tell the story; everyone loves watching videos.
Since Beforeitsnews carries both 'standard' news stories such as those carried by the mainstream media as well as 'alternative' news stories not touched by the mainstream media, the variety of both stories and writers that we like to feature are far and wide. We'll feature 'right wing' bloggers and their stories as often as we'll feature 'left wing' bloggers and their stories. Additionally, we have a huge variety of truly 'alternative' writers who submit stories about topics such as UFO's, extraterrestrial life, planets called Nibiru and creatures called Annunaki, topics that we're quite happy to feature that you won't find anywhere in the mainstream media."
A little over a year ago, RT did a video segment on just this issue, Alternative Media vs the MSM and how viewers/watchers were leaving the MSM "by the droves" and looking for their information elsewhere, specifically at Alternative Media sites.
Cross posted from Before It's News.